Serving in the Mexico Mérida Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

You don't have to take my word for it!

FAMILY!

How is your first couple days of
bishopdom?

PLEASE save me a reunion T-shirt. And some groats, too.

I got the Easter package! Thank you for the socks and for
the beautiful picture, Luci! Your use of pasta shapes is most innovative. Hermana
De Leon (her new companion) and I sat and ate all the pretzels in one sitting.

I don’t even know how to describe Hermana De Leon. She’s so
powerful and intelligent and a very compelling teacher, but at the same time
she’s so humble and...soft, I guess. She’s so peaceful. I love spending all day
with her.

Thank you also, Jenna, for the foto of the egg. I get all
fuzzy inside when you guys think of me like that.

Mom asked in the letter in the Easter package what was it
that disillusioned me or made me so interested in finding real truth. It wasn’t
one thing in specific, more that realizing that my thinking was so deeply
permeated with 'false doctrine' about so many things.

Even in the church, unless we are feasting on
the scriptures and making everything a matter of prayer, we are wrong about so
many things. And we don’t even know, because our ideas feel fine and are
accepted.Most of the time we don’t even
consider them as something we’ve chosen to believe. I guess I just realized how
very narrow and fine is the ray of real truth. That’s why I like the definition
of repentance in Preach My Gospel so
much: “our love for [Christ] leads us to repent…to change our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that
are not in harmony with His will.Repentance
includes forming a fresh view of God, ourselves, and the world.”

There is also the little gem-let that says: “No one can know spiritual truths without prayer.”

Man, if there was one thing I could beat into the heads of
the people here is that THERE IS SUCH A THING AS FALSE DOCTRINE. People are so
content to say to me “you have my beliefs and I have mine” or “we all are
worshipping the same God just in different ways.” Or, something I hear probably
two or three times a day, “Soy [religion] de mi manera.” (I live in the [religion] tradition)

I bear testimony that there is such a thing as false
doctrine, and that NOT all paths lead to the same God, but rather there is ONE
path that leads to ONE God. Christ taught ONE,
VERY SPECIFIC doctrine, and if there are two different ideas about what that
doctrine is, it is impossible that they are both correct. And if you do not
believe in the CORRECT doctrine, the CORRECT instructions Christ gave us to
return to God, or if you do not believe in God as He REALLY IS, you are not in
the "straight and narrow path" that leads to eternal life, in the "broad path"
that leads to destruction. So you had better be really sure that the things you
believe in are THE truth.

And the way to do that is not to ask a bunch of people, or
study and think really hard, or search the internet. It is to ask God, who is
the SOURCE of the truth and cannot lie and WANTS us to know the right path to
come to Him because He loves us. So of course He will answer us, His children,
to confirm to us the correct path to come to Him.

And as the Reading Rainbow guy says, “You don’t have to take my word for it” that the Church
of Jesus Christ is the true and
only true church of God.
READ THE BOOK! If the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith had to be a prophet
and therefore the Church of Christ
really has been restored to the earth and this is it. And the way you can know
it is true is to-- ask God.

Phew! I explain that to people probably ten times a day.

On a different topic, here is a question I have been
thinking about: Why does giving service help us to develop charity? What is it
about service that engenders love? How does that work?!

Called to Serve

Lia Loves Letters

Please select "Pouch Free" from the column on the left! They will print and deliver your message to Lia in México!

The kind of faith I want to have...

"The spirit of this work is urgency... We must move more rapidly. We must take things up a notch. If we have to call down miracles of angels, then call them down. The drama is unfolding and we must do whatever it takes to ratchet up the work... Every dispensation begins with a vision. We must have a vision. We are the church that dreams dreams. We are the church that has visions. We must believe in miracles. We must believe and build on what our forefathers have done…We must live up to our potential. God will bless us with whatever we need. God wants us to just see what He sees and know what He knows. He wants us to ratchet up the vision. God is easy to please and hard to satisfy...This is not convenient, easy work. We have got to take things to the edge. We have to move into the realm of the miraculous. We have to live in such a way that we cannot do it alone anymore- where we will resort to the Lord--where we will cry, “Without thy help, I will fall. Help me fly.” Go to the edge where miracles happen. Move into the realm of the miraculous." --Elder Jeffrey R. Holland